Commonwealth Games will have a very different feel in Delhi

As the taxi carrying the chief executive of the England team left the Delhi
Commonwealth Games netball venue it had a close encounter with a bullock in
the road.

Race against time: only two out of 12 venues are anywhere near readiness for the 2010 Commonwealth Games in DelhiPhoto: AFP

By Nick Hoult

6:03PM BST 21 Oct 2009

Admittedly it is one of the great Indian clichés but at the same time it displayed perfectly the fact next year's Games will have a different feel to the chic, metropolitan experiences of the previous two venues of Melbourne and Manchester.

Following in their wake has left the Delhi organising committee having to develop a hide almost as thick as that cow's over the past few weeks as accusations of incompetence have flown and concerns have grown over infrastructure for an event budgeted to cost $1.6 billion that is now less than a year away.

On Oct 3, 2010, the Commonwealth Games will begin, but it will be about more than proving India can be an international sporting force beyond the cricket field. It will display whether an emerging economy can cope with the needs of thousands of athletes, officials and media while at the same time showcasing a country with plenty to lose and much to gain.

With the International Olympic Committee recently awarding the 2016 Olympics to Rio, the success or failure of Delhi next year will greatly interest officials from the Commonwealth Games' big brother.

With the clock outside the brand new Delhi organising committee's office yesterday showing 347 days to go, a sense of urgency is hard to avoid.

Stopping the clock is not an option even if it was announced on Tuesday that the deadline for completion of venues has been put back from its original target of this November to March next year.

That decision will do little to bridge the massive rift between the Commonwealth Games Federation and the Delhi organisers which has provided the Indian newspapers with plenty of juicy copy over the past couple of weeks.

The CGF is angry that venues are far from complete, only two out of 12 are anywhere close to being ready, and the construction of new flyovers and an underground metro system is lagging behind schedule.

It led to them demanding the appointment of an international committee to oversee the rest of the preparations. This was rebuffed by angry Delhi officials who went on to demand the sacking of the CGF chief executive, Mike Hooper.

Visiting the city this week was a delegation of sport managers from the England team, which next October will comprise of 580 athletes and officials. They were given tours of several venues, including the main stadium.

"Looking at Delhi it is an enormous building site so our concerns would be about infrastructure, but this is clearly a country where they can turn things around in days, weeks and months," Craig Hunter, the England chef de mission told Telegraph Sport.

"The greater concerns are the systems and operational issues. Security is a major challenge and the accreditation process that sits behind that. If we don't have a fully integrated accreditation system then that will impact on security and if that doesn't work then the Games will not operate. It is as simple as that.

"The accreditation is passport to get people into the venues and it has to be robust and tested so that everybody feels confident that only the right people are where they should be and other people don't have access."

India is a country on high alert. As the England officials were having dinner at their Delhi hotel on Tuesday evening the Indian prime minister was warning an attack is imminent. Forget the traffic. Security in Delhi next October will be a key factor. Last year an English badminton team pulled out of an event in Hyderabad after reading graphic warnings of terrorist action.

The England team are bracing themselves for worried athletes pulling out of Delhi.

"I think that is inevitable," said Hunter. "We will not put pressure on people to participate. It will be purely their own decision. I recognise that as a team we have to get on the plane and feel comfortable that everything is fine and safe."

This week the chief of the Delhi police set out his strategy for keeping 8,000 athletes safe. Snipers, machine guns, bomb disposal units and the use of 7,000 CCTV cameras will be the main weapons.

The other is appealing to the Delhi public to help. In a country where road rules are there to be ignored the government is drafting a Commonwealth Games Act that will make it an offence to use lanes dedicated to official buses and motorcades.

There is no doubt Delhi officials are hurting. They feel a culture clash is clouding preparations. They want Indians to run this tournament so a legacy can be left behind and bids for other, more high profile events, can be a regular option. That is why they are so sensitive about hiring foreign hands.

They will be encouraged to hear England officials were impressed with what they saw this week, particularly the athletes' village, which will become high-end housing after the Games.

"The village we saw today is the best I have seen," said Don Parker, the performance director. "This is better than Beijing, and they set a new benchmark. To have only two athletes for every bathroom is unprecedented.

"India does throw up a lot of challenges but they are not as extensive as people associate with the country and this will be an experience that lives with these athletes for ever."

The slums will be hidden and last week the mayor of Delhi announced a mass castration programme to control thousands of stray dogs. The problem is the dogs keep the rat population in check. Delhi will be a very different Games.

Ring of steel with six levels of security

1 Terminal Three of Indira Gandhi Airport will be used exclusively to check in athletes, VIPs and other dignitaries.

2 All vehicles approaching the athletes’ village will have to have an electronic tag to pass through. Any vehicle attempting to enter without the tag will be with a spiked ‘tyre killer’. If that does not work steel bars will stop the vehicle.

4 Hotels containing delegates will have watch towers built nearby with bomb disposal units in place.

5 At the stadium there will be an anti-intrusion squad to keep an eye on the crowd.

6 Fans will pass through four layers of security. Outer security ring for scanning vehicles, middle ring to frisk and scan spectators, an inner ring which will only allow through spectators with bar coded tickets and a final exclusion ring with last-minute bag and frisk checks.